Posted
by
Hemos
on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:15PM
from the the-joy-of-connections dept.

Mad_Rain writes "Every nerd I know had (or still has) a fairly extensive Lego collection. But I don't think most would go so far as to steal $200,000 worth of Legos. When police arrived to carry away the evidence from his home, they needed a 20-foot-long truck. They found in the car of the accused a laptop computer that had a list of Target stores that he was planning to defraud along with the mapping software on how to get there."

But then, I can't really think of any articles here where a comment like "I think all American chicks have huger asses than the global norm" would be on-topic and a decent contribution to the discussion, can you?

It's twelve star-wars sets at $600,000, from some stores other than Target. "Only" $200,000 was from Target stores. Who knows the rest? ("Records of the Lego collector's Web site, Bricklink.Com, show that Swanberg has sold nearly $600,000 worth of Legos since 2002, said Dolyniuk.")

"There were no stories and now all of the sudden there are like 5 in a row!"

I think they set the story to post at 7:32 pm instead of am. As a result, we had to wait for the clock to roll around before the stories behind it would show up. Of course, I could be wrong, but I did 'back' a few times and noticed the time hasn't changed on it.

And you're the reason why the Slashdot moderation system is such a mess. Stop worrying about if it gives Karma or not and worry about the content and what the moderation means. Funny is Funny, Insightful isn't Funny. Get over the fact that it doesn't give Karma, whoop-de-fricken-do.

The problem is, you make a joke that is funny, get 5 "+1 funny" mods, but that's outweighed by the one cretin who doesn't get the joke and mods it offtopic. A few of those and you're blocked from posting. I don't see why people who give us a much needed laugh should be prevented from doing so again. So in that sense yes, karma does matter.

I just realized why there are so few replies to this story so far: everyone here is out trying to figure out how they can get their hands on $200,000 worth of legos. I could build my own home addition with all those; that would be awesome.

I just realized why there are so few replies to this story so far: everyone here is out trying to figure out how they can get their hands on $200,000 worth of legos. I could build my own home addition with all those; that would be awesome.

It'd be drafty though. I think you might need some insulation between those legos blocks.

Can you really blame him? The store's name is Target. Their logo is that of a target. Their mascot is a dog with a bull's-eye encircling one eye, looking as though it's in an abusive relationship. Oh, and those damn commercials. Clearly, this company is just asking for abuse.

The guy didn't exactly steal the legos (or LEGO bricks, for the anal-retentative). He pulled the ol' UPC-swap trick on the store. What do you want to bet the retail market will use cases like this to try to push for RFID tagging of products? "If we only had RFID tags in all of the products we sell this never would have happened, and we would have saved our shareholders tons of money."

"The guy didn't exactly steal the legos (or LEGO bricks, for the anal-retentative). He pulled the ol' UPC-swap trick on the store."

It's shoplifting, which is theft, so he did *exactly* steal them. The point when the crime is committed is when you switch the price tag concealed from the merchant. (It would be legal to switch the tags with the merchant's consent -- it's the point of concealment where it becomes shoplifting.)

You should probably read up on RFID. Since RFID tags don't need to be visible to scan them (unlike optical barcodes) they could be:

embedded in the packaging, so that the only way to get rid of it is to either get rid of the packaging, or mutilate it trying to find the tag, bvoth of which would make store employees pay greater attention to you, which is exactly what you don't want.

embedded in one of the bricks inside the package. The only way to get rid of it t

No, but you could probably add another RFID tag, with a larger antenna and stronger signal....

The problem is, there's an actual underlying protocol that keeps RFID tags from interfering with each other. You could have 2, 20, or 200 tags all in the same LEGO box, and the scanner would read them all.

You could use some sort of jamming device to block all RFID tags in a small area, but if the store can't read the RFID tag they'll have to do the equivalent of "Price check on aisle 5!", which will reveal the actual price of the item, thus nullifying all of your efforts.

The problem is, there's an actual underlying protocol that keeps RFID tags from interfering with each other. You could have 2, 20, or 200 tags all in the same LEGO box, and the scanner would read them all.

Oh great, so every LEGO brick will have it's own RFID tag... and roll on IPv6 and every LEGO brick can then have it's own IP address, and a website with a picture of itself.

You could use some sort of jamming device to block all RFID tags in a small area, but if the store can't read the RFID tag they'll have to do the equivalent of "Price check on aisle 5!", which will reveal the actual price of the item, thus nullifying all of your efforts.

Unless of course the cashier is in cahoots with you.

When I worked retail I was told by a manager that most store theft is commonly thought to be employees rather than customers, but harder to catch because they will ring up items for their f

So RFID tags are not easy to change, but I don't think bar codes are going to be replaced as the primary thing to scan at the checkout counters for at least the next couple years. If you're going to try some swap the barcode scam make sure the store has an small appliance section with working floor model microwaves. Just to make it look more convincing give the box a couple kicks and small tears while you're walking around looking for the microwaves. That way if a store employee asks you can try something l

Federal and state authorities will move aggressively to ban mapping software.

Sheriff Clancy Wiggum noted a sharp increase in teenagers and middle management types who have been recently arrested with print outs of maps taken from online sources like Google.Com and Yahoo.Com. "Easy access to information like this has to stop!" said Sheriff Wiggum, noting that from now on only donut stores and brothels should be shown on maps.

The story says he has sold $600k worth of legos. Damn, he's just a run-of-the-mill crook, in it merely for the profit. I was hoping the story would explain what kind of totally insane thing he wanted to build that needed $200k worth of legos. Like he was building a whole house or something. Drat.

If a Lego set costs $99 at the store but $1 to make, how much did this guy really steal... was it $200,000 worth of product or $2,000. And if he paid more than $2,000 for it (which it sounds like he did) is it really stealing at all?

Let's just call him the Robin Hood of Lego Land and move on with our lives.

I actually worked in Lego's packaging plant in Enfield, Conn. USA for awhile. Apparently, the summer I was working there someone was stealing a bunch of new Star Wars sets off of the line and selling them on ebay. They found out soon after, of course, because he was using an ebay account with his home phone number.

Well, to be relevant, a piece of evidence has to have (at least) the slighest tendency to make something more or less likely to be true. I'd say the maps pin-pointing the Target stores makes it at least slightly more likely that this guy was pulling off this scam that affected Target stores...

Also, it doesn't show "intend" [sic]. If anything, it would show a "common plan or scheme," but since that's only applicable to character evidence, it's immaterial here.

Does anybody here know what it would cost to injection-mold your own Legos vs. buying a decent quanity of Legos such that a kid could build something reasonable (for locally defined values of reasonable).

i can't see it being feasible to mould your own lego, building the moulds well isn't going to be cheap (lego relies on VERY tight tollerances to fit together well) and anyway there are commercial clones out there (though i don't think any compete with technic).if you just wan't boxes of mixed lego to play with then your best bet is probablly to buy it by the kilo on ebay. you will get some crap so expect a level of shrinkage caused by removal of broken lego and non lego items from lego bought this way. but

If you look on the bricks themself you will see LEGO printed on each dot. And the box says LEGO.

Hey, the Mountain Dew on my desk in front of me says "Mountain Dew" right on the can. I guess I can't talk about drinking two Mountain Dews, can I?

The website refers to the product as LEGO.

That's because the website uses the word more as an adjective than as a noun. It's always "LEGO building sets" or "LEGO bricks". But the word "LEGO" has become sort of a generic term to refer to the style of building

And the word "ninja" comes from Japanese, which lacks plurals (sort of). The correct way to talk about multiple of the assassins would be "lots of ninja attacked me". Doesn't stop me from saying "ninjas", though.

I heard that there was this Grammar Ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude misspelled a word the Grammar Ninja killed the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw a Grammar Ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid used a comma wrong.

Hey, the Mountain Dew on my desk in front of me says "Mountain Dew" right on the can. I guess I can't talk about drinking two Mountain Dews, can I?

But you can't say Mountains Dew... um... any way.Look I have a two plastic boxes and a plastic bag... I don't have three plastics.I have three plastic objects. or a pile of plastic crap.

I have 1500 Lego Bricks, 100 Lego men and 20 lego horses.What have I? I have a lot of lego.

One lego brick.Two lego bricks.

"a lego" makes no sense. like a red, or a round.

"Pass me that red bit of lego.""I need two more of those 2X3 bricks to finish my ninja maze.""Chuck me half that pile of lego"

At this point I think that people are just using Legos to troll people, and dispite the fact that the word brings me almost physical pain*, I'm never going to bother correcting any persons about this online from now on.It's just a huge waste of time. From now on I'm only going to correct people about this in person... I almost winch every time I read or hear legos.

Yep. It comes of having a single currency across twelve countries with far too many languages, each with its own way of forming the plural. Should two be called 'euros', 'euraux', 'euronen'? The easiest way around this problem is to just declare that 'euro' does not change in the plural.

Hey, the Mountain Dew on my desk in front of me says "Mountain Dew" right on the can. I guess I can't talk about drinking two Mountain Dews, can I?

Of course you can. It's a free country. You could even say 'cat' to a dog. But a difference between Mountain Dew and Lego is that the latter explicitely request not to refer to their product as 'legos'.

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of

bastardizing plurals just because it sounds cute gets tired after you're 14 years old. calling sheep "sheeps", calling you "youse" or calling lego "legos" is a teenybopper creation that just makes people look like morons after they should have grown up.

If you want to stay in the mid teens and call them "legos" then go for it. It just reveals to the world a lack of common sense & maturity.